Although K-9 (with James Belushi) was released prior to this film (exactly three months earlier), Turner & Hooch became more popular and seemingly overshadowed its greater success, even though K-9 had a very similar plot. A pilot for a Turner & Hooch TV series was made and ran as a part of The Magical World of Disney.

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Scott Turner (Tom Hanks) is an obsessively neat police investigator who is bored with his minor police work in the fictional town of Cypress Beach in Northern California and is set to transfer to a better job in Sacramento, while fellow investigator David Sutton (Reginald VelJohnson) is to be his replacement. As Scott shows David around, we meet local junk-yard owner Amos Reed (John McIntire), who is Scott’s friend and owner of Hooch (Beasley the Dog), a large and slobbery Dogue de Bordeaux.

After a thug kills Amos, Scott pleads with police chief Howard Hyde (Craig T. Nelson) to let him take on Amos's murder case. Believing that Hooch is the only "witness" he has, Scott brings him home. The energetic dog promptly tears the investigator's house apart, chews up his car, and turns his life upside down. On a positive note, however, Hooch also instigates a romance between Scott and the new town veterinarian Emily Carson (Mare Winningham); Hooch also starts his own romance with the vet’s dog, Camille.

Scott and Hooch slowly bond, and they work together to solve the murder. It’s a drug-smuggling operation, run out of a local seafood distributor, with money-laundering assistance from the corrupt police chief Howard Hyde. When the drug kingpin is cornered, Hooch takes a bullet for his human buddy and dies despite Emily’s best efforts. But Camille has puppies, one of whom that looks and acts exactly like Hooch.

Hooch's real name was Beasley, and he was a Dogue de Bordeaux (French mastiff), a French breed of work dog developed in the 15th century. Beasley was born on a dog kennel in Merrimac, Wisconsin owned by Peter Curley. Beasley was later purchased along with three other dogs for production of the film and were trained by Clint Rowe, who makes a brief appearance in the film as an ASPCA officer. Beasley died in 1992 aged 14. Animal Makers created an exact replica of Hooch for the famous death scene.

Henry Winkler was the original director, Winker was fired thirteen days into production by studio executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, according to Winkler on the October 10, 2012 The Howard Stern Show.

Many scenes were filmed on location in Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Moss Landing, California. "Cypress Beach" is fictional, using mostly Pacific Grove for shots such as the police department, the wedding foot chase, and the car chase down Ocean View Ave.

Turner & Hooch gained a mixed response from critics, with a 52% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 27 reviews,[2] but it was a box office success.[1] No plans remain for a sequel despite its revived popularity following Hanks' rise to success. NBC did a television pilot based on the film in 1990. It aired in the summer with another dog pilot, "Poochinski" under the banner, "Two Dog Night".

Turner & Hooch has been referred to in various films and television shows, including the NBC/ABC medical sitcomScrubs, in which main characters J.D. and Turk modify shift schedules so that Doctors Turner and Hooch are teamed up as a surgical team in the episode "My Faith in Humanity" (Doctor Turner was played by Jim Hanks, Tom Hanks' brother). They actually make a good team, and are disappointed when they have to disband. Another episode has Turk offended at JD's assumption that Turner and Hooch was an interracial buddy movie, an assumption made based on the aforementioned Hooch. In the second season of Castle, Beckett and Castle compare themselves to Turner and Hooch, with Castle being Hooch. This comparison returned in the Castle season 7 episode Kill Switch.

During an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, O'Brien gave Tom Hanks a preserved dog skeleton, claiming it was his old friend Hooch. As one of O'Brien's first guests on The Tonight Show, Hanks improvised a song from an alleged Turner & Hooch stage musical. During the 2006 Academy Awards, Tom Hanks played in a sketch about acceptance speeches that ran on too long. In his comedic lengthy speech, he thanked Hooch. In Tom's Screen Test for Toy Story. They took a line from this film which was Woody telling a Dog (Not Seen) not to eat a yellow verson of Rallye Car from Tin Toy and instead of getting in the car like Turner did in the film, he dropped down to his knees and was pounding the ground, saying "Oh, You Stupid Dog.".